Terrance McGee learned all about the excitement of play-off basketball as a Bear in the American college game.

Now he reckons his current team have the collective spirit to deal with their own version of March madness and claim a decent seeding in the end-of-season knockout.

Point guard McGee and the Genesis Brighton Bears have shown plenty of resilience in their rollercoaster season.

Not least in coming back from a one-point home defeat by Chester last Saturday to over-turn a 20-point deficit and beat the Jets on the road the next evening.

Now they face another key weekend in the scramble for league positions.

Arch rivals Guildford Heat visit the Triangle tomorrow (7pm) and Bears go to improved Plymouth on Sunday.

McGee, who played college basketball with distinction for the South West Missouri State Bears, will relish the challenge.

The 2002 version of the respected Street and Smith's college basketball guide featured McGee, along with would-be NBA stars like Kyle Korver, Josh Howard and Jameer Nelson and 26 pages ahead of the top high school talent of the time, Lebron James.

The guide said: "There will be games in which the Bears will most likely have to hop on Terrance McGee's back."

No wonder the main thing McGee learnt at college was how to deal with pressure.

Especially at this time of year, dubbed March Madness in the college game as play-offs take place.

The 25-year-old from Milwaukee said: "This is a big time for all those college players. It's a grand stage, you're on the TV playing in front of everybody.

"You deal with pressure throughout your conference tournament. That's when you learn to deal with it."

He added: "We try to keep everybody positive here. Sometimes we get on at each other but that's because we expect more from each other.

"We say 'don't get down on yourself'.

"If you're supposed to take a shot, then take it because we need that. "That gives everybody energy and confidence which helps us in the long run. We've had a lot of ups and down and we're trying to correct that before we get in the play-offs.

"Right now that's the most important thing, staying in the play-offs."

McGee put Bears ahead with 3.8 seconds to go in their defeat by Chester.

He said: "I know I left some time on the clock just in case I missed, so we could get the tip-back.

"It hurt to lose but the best thing about it was we played the next day so we could forget about it and come back again."

McGee's back court sidekick Daniel Hildreth admits it can take a set-back to get Bears into top gear.

He said: "In some cases it takes a hard elbow from an opposing player to be a wake-up call.

"Or it takes a player to miss a couple of shots and somebody to say 'come on man, get going'.

"In that respect, we stick together."

Phil Waghorn will demand that type of spirit for the full 40 minutes against an in-form Guildford team with whom Bears are developing a keen rivalry.

The Bears coach's target for an unbeaten March is now unattainable but he said: "I still believe it comes down to playing for the full 40 minutes.

"We didn't do something for 3.8 seconds last week and paid the ultimate price.

"I thought we'd folded at half-time last Sunday. My challenge to them was 'is this the best you've got after what they did to us last night?'

"Fortunately they proved me wrong. We need more of that."

Bears guard Ronnie Baker captained England to a 75-59 win over Barbados in their opening Commonwealth Games outing yesterday.